The Irrestistible Deal

“Your baggage is 8 kg over the limit” said the apologizing tone of the woman at the airline check-in counter. Knowing that our baggage would certainly be over the limit of fifteen kgs, and the 20,000 Rupiah per kg over-the-limit rate we had noticed when we purchased the tickets at Air Asia ticket counter in Denpasar airport, I pulled out two 100,000 Rupiah notes. There was hesitation behind the counter. Had the rate been out of date like nearly every price we encountered in Bali during our visit, I wondered. “That’s 160, right?”

“Do you have a continuing flight?” the hesitant voice continued. “No”, I replied, realising that meant the options for not paying had been exhausted.

There was a secretive low tone conversation between the check-in agent and the baggage handler and the woman said disappointedly, “OK, we will charge you 100.” Ah, I thought, the unrecognisable India has caught up with the familiar one. I said to Srimati, “I guess this means no receipt, huh?” “No, no. Receipt, yes!” the emphatic voice on the other side of the counter intervened.

Srimati and I agreed to the deal we had not counted on making here. I guess we deprived the agent of the enjoyment of making the deal — and she couldn’t stand charging us the “starting” price.

Over our week here, we learnt that there is a “starting” price for nearly everything in Bali. The price is just to get the conversation going — the sale would hardly prove the mettle of either the buyer or the seller without the bargaining exchange.

In the Ubud market, after making a very attractive spice deal (I am thinking attractive for us, but it had to be so for the seller also as well for the sale to go through), in which the prices of items agreed and disagreed were too difficult to keep track of because we were negotiating different quantities of 4-5 items at once, and which even produced the “boss lady” in a cameo appearance on the verge of breaking the deal, the level of satisfaction on both sides was so much that I had decided to pay the vendors more upon our return through the maze of stalls. But the same woman, who stuck out her tongue at me in irritation during the negotiations, was extremely friendly and smiling and offered a hand in peace even before I gave the extra money to the boss lady.

Vendors couldn’t always make the deals consistently and to their advantage due to lack of arithmetic skills. On one of our day trips, our tour driver dropped us off at an isolated restaurant for our lunch where prices for the buffet were too high and the entrées on the menu held a worse promise, and while our tour group was debating what to do the waiter made an offer to lower the prices. After a while, our group managed to bring the price of the buffet plus tax to 45,000 Rupiah, in place of the “starting” published price of 60,000 plus 20% tax (the tax is really 10%, and most good restaurants charged us 5% service). The waiter discussed this price with the manager and came back saying that it was too complicated to figure the actual price and tax for our 45,000 Rupiah offer, and that they had decided to make a counter offer of 35 plus 7, totaling 42,000 Rupiah.

Bali is desperate from the decline in tourists after the two bombings. Srimati and I hoped that the Indonesian government would put some resources into diversifying the economy in this place so it won’t have to live by the ebb and flow of tourism. Perhaps we could enjoy the deals more wholeheartedly then.